19,341 feet; 30 smiles (and counting)
Bushkill teen turns trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro into fundraiser for children with cleft palates, lips.
Ryan Baki was going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro anyway, but he is a dentist’s son with a lot of empathy so he decided to turn that epic vertical hike into a fundraising opportunity for people in impoverished places who need a vital dental procedure.
On Dec. 23, the Bushkill Township teen will begin the journey to the top of the world’s tallest freestanding mountain — meaning one not part of a range like the Rockies or Himalayas — and expects to finish in seven days.
His father, Fayez, is coming along. Ryan, a freshman at Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, is only 14, and despite the fact that he will be accompanied by a lot of professional guides up the Tanzanian mountain, it’s the sort of adventure on which at least one parent should probably tag along.
That said, the elder Baki seems fairly certain Ryan could do it by himself. He’s a threesport athlete — soccer, tennis and golf — and has the build and loose limbs of a born hiker.
“On Macchu Picchu last year, he was leading the pack,” Fayez said.
Macchu Picchu is a 15thcentury Inca ruin in Peru and stands about 7,900 feet above sea
level, so it’s a good test of legs and lungs.
“It was a great adventure,” said Ryan, a soft-spoken teen with a warm smile. “So we decided we should take it to the next level.”
Kilimanjaro, an extinct volcano that is the highest point in Africa, seemed like a good next level. It’s 16,000 feet high from its base and 19,341 above sea level.
But rather than just climb it and come away with a good story to share, Ryan decided to make the trek more meaningful.
In school, he learned about a program called “Operation Smile,” which pays for surgery to repair cleft palates and cleft lips — disfiguring conditions in which the upper palate or upper lip isn’t fully formed. The condition occurs in roughly 1 of 500 to 750 births.
“In the U.S., they’re stitched up [at birth], so you really don’t see anybody with that in this country,” Fayez Baki said.
But in poorer countries, the conditions are rarely fixed. For infants, they are dangerous because they interfere with feeding. But there are many other complications, including repeated ear infections and interference with speech and language development.
Beyond that, they can give rise to bullying and social ostracizing.
Operation Smile, founded in 1982, fixes the conditions for $240 with procedures that take about 45 minutes.
In setting up his fundraiser, Ryan chose a modest goal — $5,895, the height of the mountain in meters. But he exceeded that in no time, so he raised it to $19,341, the height in feet. As of Saturday, he had raised $7,470, enough for about 30 procedures.
When the adventure is over, Kilimanjaro will take its place on the lengthy list of exotic places Ryan and his family, a globetrotting bunch, have visited over the years.
Fayez and his wife, Sarah, a biochemical engineer, reckon their son and three daughters — Celine, 9, Sophia, 8 and Julia, 6 — ought to see as much of the world as possible, and not just for the sake of the scenery.
“Trips have to have a cultural value to entice us,” Fayez said, painting travel as a banquet of experiences that broaden mind and soul.
Kilimanjaro is referred to as a “walk-up” mountain, meaning it doesn’t have the crags and crevasses that make some mountains so daunting and dangerous. But the term is only meant to distinguish it from deadly climbs like Everest. There is nothing easy about Kilimanjaro, and fewer than half the people who set out to conquer it succeed.
Weighing his chances, Ryan said he is chiefly worried about altitude sickness, the malady arising from oxygen deprivation that thwarts many climbers.
He will also experience five climate zones through the ascent, including arctic cold.
“If I can conquer the elevation sickness, I think I can make it,” he said.
However far he gets, the attempt and the motivation behind it can serve as inspiration, said Sarah Baki, who will spend Christmas with the girls in her native Switzerland as her son reaches for the sky.
“It’s a message for his generation that they can accomplish great things,” she said.